Open office panel systems, commercialized heavily for the past twenty years, have a number of drawbacks. While they have been promoted as being versatile, movable systems that permit easy office re-arrangement, this has not proven to be the case. A complete partition or panel system involves numerous parts, and a completely assembled systems, have so many inter-dependent components and complicated fasteners that it is a difficult task, requiring special skills, in order to make adjustments in an open plan layout after the system has been installed. The complexities of the systems and number of parts involved make initial installation complex, and modification of an existing system involves similar difficulties.
Open office panel systems also have functional drawbacks. Such panels typically are thin and flimsy. Moreover, such panels were originally developed prior to the availability of personal computers and heavy use of power and communications wiring for desk top and work station applications. Attempts have been made to accommodate electrical and electronic wiring in open office panel systems, but these attempts have met with limited success with wiring still being difficult, generally inadequate, or at least aesthetically unappealing, for the modern electronic office environment.
Open office panel systems generally provide load bearing walls, with desk tops, shelving, and storage units necessarily being mounted on the panels themselves. This requires that the panels be structurally capable of supporting such loads and it necessarily limits the variation of office furniture available to individual office workers to a limited range of wall hung furniture.
The concept and appearance of open panel systems also has produced some user dissatisfactions based on emotional considerations. The thin walls, open doorways and general sameness of appearance tends to create a feeling of monotony and produces a maze-like appearance in an office environment. Office workers get the feeling that they are in temporary quarters with little privacy or individuality or importance.
As a result of the obsolescence and growing dissatisfaction with conventional open plan partition systems, there has been renewed interest in traditional office desks and office furniture, notwithstanding the limitations in such systems that caused the development of the open office partition systems in the first place.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved free standing office furniture and wall system that possesses the desirable features of both free standing desks and panel systems while substantially overcoming the limitations in both systems.